Working to change our understanding of mental health disorders and the approach to treating them.
Working to reduce stigma and promote acceptance.
Teaching positive ways to a better life and mind, to a better mind and life.

Monday, July 8, 2013

A Few Thoughts

A few thoughts as I prepare to enter the hospital again.

One,

Returning to the hospital is to help stay alive. I simply cannot trust my own mind. There is darkness and then there is darkness no one can understand who hasn't either gone over the edge into death or has been right on that edge. I push it back, I push it back - I've been pushing it back for a long time now - and right now I just have no more push left in me. More on this another time. I also know what suicidal psychosis is like, how capable my mind is of having an episode and how little control one has over over psychotic episodes. Once my mind goes far enough down a certain road then I have very little control over that. Secondly, unlike before, I am losing crucial internal connections that keep me from allowing those forces to take control over my mind. In the past I could fight it off (with what little control I had left). Now the essential connections - what I call "anchors" - are disappearing which means I'll have less desire and ability to fight off the episodes when they strike (I describe this in The Inferno - A Psychotic Episode). Thirdly, I can find little desire in my heart to go on at all. No one has the right to judge that, I'm afraid, as much as there are those that think they do (which is mostly grounded in sky God stuff, which is of no interest to me). The will or desire to live is for each person to square up within themselves. I wrote a bit in some other posts why this is but I'm too tired to look them up or link back to them.

Anyway, there are things I'd like to do before that happens so I need the safety of the hospital for now.

Two,

I have to repeat and make clear that this is not the "illness" or the "the disease taking its natural course" or any of this other nonsense you read or hear from so called "experts" in psychiatry. I beat much of the illness and put much of that behind me (again, I've touched on this in prior posts). No, this is more about life winning. I fought life and lost. Life is doing this to me, not the "illness". Suffering from bipolar certainly helped grease the skids and is part of what made life difficult but what is happening today is a psychological side effect and not the illness of bipolar per se. I feel this is crucial to understand (and which I'll tell the docs in the hospital when they try - as they certainly will - to "treat" the "illness"). So for those that know me and my history with the "illness" of bipolar, no, it's not that. I'm handling that. It's what I described (in prior posts) about life difficulties that is doing me in.

Three,

That aside, my brain IS broken. I can't argue against that, obviously, only in why it's broken. I think I could, with some freaking breaks from life and some actual family support, unbreak my mind but at this point I think that may be a very large boulder to push uphill. And the truth is that I am, after all I've been through the past five years, just plain plumb tuckered out and too exhausted to push that boulder uphill. I think this is true for many (most? all?) people who battle this and succumb - in the end they're just too exhausted to fight it anymore. What I've "been through the last five years" (and much of the previous twenty) may not look like much to most. Or all. But this is irrelevant (and always the problem with those going through suicidal forces). It has nothing to do with what people can see on the outside or how "difficult" one person's life is compared to another's and everything to do with the person on the inside. But this is something I'll explore more another day. But basically it's a broken brain vs life. And life often wins.

Four,

It's hard for anyone who knows me, or has known me, to accept that I would want to die. I appear "cheerful" and "happy". And I am - much of the time. It's that corner over there <points to dark area of the mind> that's the problem. Just because I hide it well doesn't mean it's not a problem. And this is true of many people who kill themselves (either outright or slowly through drugs and alcohol). Look at John Belushi. Or lots of funny people. Happy and funny on the surface, miserable and lonely beneath it. I also appear to be "smart". Sorry, but "smart" has nothing to do with it. Lots of smart people have killed themselves. I think we could agree that Ernest Hemingway was pretty smart. But he killed himself. I could fill a book of examples like this. This is NOT something you can "out-smart". So no, being "smart" and looking "happy" have nothing to do with it. While I may appear to be "high functioning", there so happens to be some stuff under the hood that's very low functioning. But that's just the way brains roll. Work well over here, totally broken over there. What you see is what you get. I'll speak more about the human brain later.

Five,

Society and its inability to handle anything regarding death is a huge part of the problem. And not just with me specifically (though it undeniably is part of my problem), but with suicide and mental health disorders in general. For death I place the blame firmly at the feet of the cultures of sky gods. Ostensibly meant to "ease" our minds about death, religions - all of them - have instead created nothing but mass fear and ignorance and it is that fear and ignorance that further pushes one towards the edge. But I could - and will - fill several very long essays on that subject so I can't go into detail on that here. Yet non-religious people have equal difficulty it seems and that appears to be nothing more than a maturity issue. I think people are becoming less mature and able to deal with any serious issues regarding any terminal illness. So they just avoid it all together. I have lots to say on this as well which I'll address in essays in my other blog. Bottom line though is that society utterly and completely fails almost anyone dealing with suicidal issues. Including, very often, the mental health "care" system. But this takes a whole book to address. Briefly though, psychiatry is literally at least five decades behind in understanding how the brain works. Honestly. Do any research or study into the latest findings on the brain and then research mainstream psychiatry's understanding of it and their "treatment" methods based on that understanding and you'll see that psychiatry is stuck at least five decades in the past. Which is to say that if one is facing "will to live" issues, they don't have a lot of choices. Or hope. Which is why suicide - which I believe should be the most preventable cause of death - is one of the fastest growing causes of death.

Six,

This has nothing to do with anyone else. It's not "choosing" to hurt people or being "selfish" or any of that other nonsense you hear or read. This is a huge part of the ignorance that exists. Please, don't be a part of that ignorance. Other people's rash personal emotions and fearful ignorance is just a big part of the societal goo that makes things worse.

Seven,

There is hope. As long as a person is still drawing breath, there always is. There are of course success stories. How little or much of that there is for any one person is part of the issue, however. Just defining hope is an issue. And part of the problem. What YOU see as "hope" may not exist in the person at all. That's how minds work - they perceive things differently. But yes, there's a possibility I'll discover hope again but right now I'm just all fresh out of hope. I've built up and explored more avenues of hope in the past several years than China has tea and it always vanishes. So right here, right now, the little "hope maker" part of my brain is all worn out and broken. Maybe it can be fixed with a stay at the hospital, maybe not. But since it's not over over yet - I'm still drawing breath, after all - yes, the chance for hope still exists.

1 comment:

A little over two years later, and see all you have accomplished. How you designed your own strategy to stay afloat. How you are helping and teaching others to survive. You have saved my life more than once. And I am eternally grateful to have you as such a big part of my life. You - are amazing

About Me

I study neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, human behaviour and certain neuropsychiatric disorders. I am currently working on a book summarizing much of what I believe are the most relevant brain abnormalities involved in neuropsychiatric disorders along with my own views and considerable insights.

Aside from that, I continue to pursue photography. Currently, I am working on a project involving female faces and various shapes and colours that I find interesting. Some of my previous photography is up on my website. Only a tiny fraction is up on the site (because of <ahem> "hard drive issues") but it gives some idea of what I do with a camera and the right lenses.

These two pursuits, along with great interests in music, cooking and baking, looking after Mrs Bean (and she after me) and following various sports (particularly baseball) keeps me more than busy enough.